Thursday, January 12, 2006

The dog ate my manuscript ...

Oh man, if I was married, I'd love to explain a wild night of carousing this way to my angry wife:

"My account of events is a truthful but subjective recollection of last night," I'd say, "and the essential truth of what I've said should not be eroded by your skepticism."

That's what fibber-memoirist James Frey, author of the now-murky "A Million Little Pieces," told CNN's Larry King last night. I gotta admit, the guy's good. If he truly is a former addict -- IF -- then he surely exhibits the superior manipulative powers of a GREAT addict.

"Contrary to erroneous published reports, Random House, Inc. is not offering a special refund on A Million Little Pieces. It has long been standard Random House Inc procedure to direct consumers who want a refund on any of the tens of thousands of books we publish back to their retail place of purchase, unless they purchased the book directly from us in which case we refund it. Yesterday we had 15 calls to our customer service line specific to A Million Little Pieces and fewer than that today. "

15 comments:

I'm fascinated by the way being "exposed" seems to have made James Frey even more of a celebrity. First you fake something by making yourself seem more pitiful than you really are, though I suppose that makes you more pitiful than you were pretending to be, then people are fascinated by your hoax. I guess that makes the public even more pitiful than Frey, which may explain why the scam worked on so many levels

I certainly wouldn't be surprised! The corporate model for damage-control would include strategies for actually profiting from his debacle!

How many people will go out and buy the book just to see what all the fuss is about? A butt-load, I'd guess.

I have a true-crime/memoir -- no really, it's TRUE! -- coming out next fall. As a journalist, I took great pains to tell an authentic story. And in those moments of personal reflection I permit myself, I (and the reader) must still consider the existing facts. It's simply not enough to say, "I don't care what the facts are ... I see them differently."

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I have written 14 books and spent a career in editing. I'm also an award-winning newspaper writer and editor, and a widely published book critic and essayist at newspapers such as the Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Denver Post and Chicago Sun-Times.

My bestselling THE DARKEST NIGHT, is an intimate true-crime/memoir about a monstrous crime in my childhood that left two friends dead and a whole town's peace shattered. Legendary authors such as Ann Rule and Vincent Bugliosi -- as well as media critics -- hailed it as a direct literary descendant of Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood."

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